The proposed Slave Lake community services hub passed another milestone last week, meaning that the public didn’t shoot it down in flames via massive protest at an open house. That doesn’t mean the project goes ahead, but the response at the June 28th meeting likely strengthens the Town’s case that it must sell to the province.
“There were some good comments,” says Slave Lake Mayor Ray Stern.
The project proposes a new building at Main St. and 6th Ave. N.E. to replace the current Town offices as well as housing most provincial government offices. The idea is that the Town pays to build it, and gets the money back from the province in the form of rents. Provincial approval isn’t guaranteed, but the province did enter into a similar deal with the Town of Hinton, so they should be in favour of the general concept.
“Pearl (Calahasen, Lesser Slave MLA) is optimistic,” says Stern.
What the province may or not approve of is the incorporation of a performing arts theatre into the building. That’s what the Town is proposing, making the project somewhat unique, and certainly more expensive.
A good deal of the feedback at the open house came from people concerned specifically about the theatre design, as presented by architects Manasc Isaac.
“It’s a nice plan,” says Community Complex Association President Kyle Paulson. “The big question in my mind is who’s paying for it?”
Paulson says he hopes the Town consults with more people with actual theatre know-how before settling on a final design - assuming the theatre even stays in the final plans. One such person did attend the open house. Rhonda Nugent is a member of the Canadian Actors’ Equity Association and has had plenty of experience on stage. She says she quite likes the theatre concept as proposed.
“I saw a really good design actually,” she says. “The options available make it very adaptable for different sizes and styles of performances.”
Among those options are removable seating, making room size changes possible. Another is the type of overhead lighting proposed. She says the plan also seems to allow for future expansion from the currently proposed 200 seats - another positive feature in her opinion.
Nugent says she received satisfactory answers to her questions about such aspects as acoustics and flooring. There was only one item that troubled her - that of potential conflict between art and political considerations. Having an arts facility in a government office does raise that possibility, she says, and it’s a real one.
“I’ve had experiences in the past where shows have been altered because of (political interference),” she says. “This is important to me. At some point I’d like to see some reassurance.”
Nugent says she asked the question, but, “I felt it wasn’t even taken seriously.”
But other than that one point, which she doesn’t see as insurmountable, she is impressed by the theatre facility as proposed. She says she would have liked to see more groups at the open house though.
“Musical theatre? Nobody there. Dance groups? Nobody there. I was quite disappointed to see how few people were in the room.”
Mayor Stern saw it differently.
“More (people came) to that open house than any open house I can recall,” he says.
Stern says the next step in the process is to, “get the province sorted out. We need to get them into the design loop.”
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